The queen has learned to control her temper, and it has been very sweet to see her discipline herself so that she never startles or alarms her husband. Margaret has a quick temper and a powerful desire to rule, and to see her bite her tongue and hear her lower her voice so as not to confront the king with the usurpation of his powers is to see a young woman growing into wisdom. She is kind to him in a way that I thought she could never be. She sees him as a wounded animal, and when his eyes grow vague or he looks about him, trying to remember a word or a name, she puts her hand gently on his and prompts him, as sweetly as a daughter with a father in his dotage. It is a sorry end for the marriage that started in such hopes, and the king’s hidden weakness is her hidden grief. She is a woman sobered by loss: she has lost the man she loved, she has lost her husband; but she does not complain of her life to anyone but me.

To me, her temper is not muted, and often she blazes out when we are alone. ‘He does whatever the Duke of York tells him,’ she spits. ‘He is his puppet, his dog.’

‘He is obliged to govern with the agreement of the duke, and with the earls of Salisbury and Warwick,’ I say. ‘He has to answer the objection that the Privy Council made against him: that he was only for Lancaster. Now there is a parliament which is influenced by all the great men, York as well as Lancaster. In England, this is how they like it, Your Grace. They like to share power. They like many advisors.’

‘And what about what I like?’ she demands. ‘And what about the Duke of Somerset who lies dead, thanks to them? The dearest, truest . . .’ She breaks off and turns away so that I cannot see the grief in her face. ‘And what about the interest of the prince, my son? Who will serve me and the prince? Who will satisfy our likes – never mind those of the council?’

I say nothing. There is no arguing with her when she rages against the Duke of York. ‘I won’t stand for it,’ she says. ‘I am taking the prince and going to Tutbury Castle for the summer, and then on to Kenilworth. I won’t stay in London, I won’t be imprisoned in Windsor again.’

‘Nobody is going to imprison you . . .’

‘You can go and see your children,’ she rules. ‘And then you can meet me. I won’t stay in London to be ordered about by the duke and insulted by the citizens. I know what they say about me. They think I am a virago married to a fool. I won’t be so abused. I shall go and I shall take the court with me, far from London and far from the duke, and he can give what orders he likes; but I won’t have to see them. And the people of London can see how they like their city when there is no court here, and no council and no parliament. I will see them go bankrupt, they will be sorry when I take the court away and give our presence and our wealth to the people of the Midlands.’